Friday, April 30, 2004

UKIP to spend £2 million

Press Release

UKIP is set to spend £2m on its campaign for the European Parliamentary elections after a MORI poll showed the potential vote for the Party’s position on withdrawal from the European Union running at up to 35 percent.

The Party spent £400,000 in the last race for the European Parliament and got 8 percent of the vote. Its leader, Roger Knapman, noted that “we have already spent upwards of £700,000 of which more than half was for the billboards that will run through June. We expect to spend a total of £2 million, five times what we sent (sic) last time.”

In its survey, MORI asked 1,947 voters whether they would be more likely to support a moderate, democratic Party which advocated withdrawal from the European Union and an end to unlimited EU immigration. Forty percent of respondents said they would.

MORI then told voters that the UKIP was advocating such policies, and if it were the only party to do so, how would they vote on June 10th? The results were Labour 27 percent, Conservative 18 percent, Liberal Democrats 15 percent, UKIP 35 percent and Others 5 percent.

UKIP Chief Political Strategist Dick Morris said, “The purpose of this poll was to establish the maximum boundaries of UKIP support given its opposition to the EU. The survey establishes that the UKIP could, in theory grow substantially and I believe it will certainly substantially exceed its 1999 vote total.”